REHABILITATION OF A HITHERTO OVERLOOKED 
SPECIES OF MUSK TURTLE OF 
THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
By LronyaArD STEJNEGER, 
Head Curator of Biology, United States National Museum. 
When Holbrook, in 1842, published his splendid five-volume edi- 
tion of North American Herpetology with colored plates of all the 
species, he knew only one species of musk turtle, namely, the one 
Latreille in 1802 had given the name of Testudo odorata on account 
of its musky odor and which Holbrook figured and described as 
Sternothaerus odoratus. In 1856, however, J. E. Gray, in his Cata- 
logue of Shield Reptiles in the British Museum, named the same 
genus Aromochelys, also with reference to the odor, adding at the 
same time a new species, A. carinatus, based on specimens from 
Louisiana. Louis Agassiz, at this very period, was writing his 
famous Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, 
but it was not until the first volume which contains the system- 
atic treatment of the North American turtles was passing through 
the press that he received Gray’s work, and found that his conclu- 
sions to some extent had been anticipated. In an appendix to the 
second volume (1857) he therefore synonymized his genera Gonio- 
chelys and Ozotheca (again a reference to the ‘“‘Stinkpot,’’ one of the 
favorite popular names of the musk turtle) with Aromochelys, and 
his new species Gontochclys triquetra, from Lake Concordia, Louisiana, 
with A. carinatus. But in addition he described two new species 
Goniochelys minor and Ozotheca tristycha, which, however, have not 
been generally accepted by herpetologists. Thus Cope, in 1875, and 
True, in 1883, completely ignored them. Boulenger, who did not 
recognize the musk turtles as a separate genus, but placed them in 
the genus Kunosternon, in his Catalogue of Chelonians in the British 
Museum (1883) placed O. tristycha in the synonymy of Kinosternon 
odoratum, and G. minor in that of K. carinatum, the latter, however, 
with a query. In this he was followed by Siebenrock, in his mono- 
graph of the family, 1907. The same disposition was made of these 
species in Stejneger and Barbour’s Check List of North American 
Amphibians and Reptiles, published in 1917. 
No. 2452.—PROCEEDINGS U. S. NATIONAL Museum, VOL. 62, ART. 6. 
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